1 of 5 | Anya Taylor-Joy is “Furiosa.” Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures

So Dementus keeps Furiosa hostage, even bringing her to The Citadel to attempt to overtake its warlord, Immortan Joe (Lachy Hulme) and his army of War Boys. Much later, and now played by Anya Taylor-Joy, Furiosa plots her escape and revenge against Dementus.

The Mad Max world George Miller created supports different forms of storytelling in each film. Fury Road was propulsive and bombastic while Thunderdome was more localized to one region of the wasteland, and a second that Max discovers after being exiled.

The first sequel, The Road Warrior was more of a vehicular heist movie while the original film was more of a drama than an action movie. Closer to Thunderdome, Furiosa lives in the worlds introduced by Fury Road but it is no less epic.

Because Furiosa is a prequel to Fury Road, fans know that Furiosa ends up with Immortan Joe, shaves her head and loses her arm. Still, those events occur naturally, sometimes incidentally, and never stop the movie to point out the callbacks.

The Citadel and Immortan Joe’s harem of concubines were first seen as Fury Road plowed through them in chase scenes. Here, entire scenes get to play out in those realms.

Furiosa visits the neighboring Gastown and Bullet Farms, who provided armies for Fury Road’s chase but now are settings for plot and action. Dementus’ encampment is a new enclave of the wasteland.

The film introduces awesome new vehicles for chases between Immortan Joe and Dementus’ men, with Furiosa in the middle of it all. But, in a bittersweet irony, the longevity of the Mad Max franchise now means that the current film employs more screen work than its predecessors, which simply didn’t have that luxury.

Perhaps Miller’s imagination finally got bigger than could be built in the real world. There is still real vehicular work, but many sequences appear to use The Volume technology to allow the filmmakers to film in front of backgrounds unfolding on a screen behind them.

Fury Road combined shots and enhanced backgrounds digitally, but a tanker chase in the middle of Furiosa is particularly glaring. It looks like they used Fury Road as the backdrop for the new movie.

Coloring the sky to look more apocalyptic is fine. Putting the sky on a screen behind actors looks far less natural.

The sequence is still full of new contraptions, like parasails and a metal claw like a full size version of a claw machine in an arcade. Miller still uses the camera dynamically in these sequences, judiciously following the assault on a tanker from all sides.

But when it cuts to Taylor-Joy standing on a real outback road, it’s a relief to be back in the real world.

The Citadel was already a digitally enhanced set in Fury Road. Having more stationary dialogue scenes on those sets allows more time to notice the background when characters are chatting on impossibly high catwalks.

There’s still probably more vehicular work than any other Hollywood movie, just less than Mad Max films used to employ. They do drive over a dozen War Boys standing atop a tanker down the desert road.

The final chase looks like they’re really driving on sand dunes, except for closeups but that’s fair to cut to reaction shots. A shootout occurs on an outdoor set.

So these are still Mad Max action sequences created by George Miller, and designed by Guy Norris. They’re playing with more tools than used to be available, and watching War Boys fling themselves off moving vehicles to self-immolate never gets old.

In the score, Junkie XL himself, Tom Holkenborg, employs some of the memorable cues from his Fury Road score for relevant action scenes. But elsewhere, he lets the music be subtle for this film’s dramatic attention.

The world Miller created in 1979 continues to generate worthwhile new stories and engrossing places to explore. With Furiosa as compelling as Max Rockatansky, that world grows even more vast.

Fred Topel, who attended film school at Ithaca College, is a UPI entertainment writer based in Los Angeles. He has been a professional film critic since 1999, a Rotten Tomatoes critic since 2001, and a member of the Television Critics Association since 2012 and the Critics Choice Association since 2023. Read more of his work in Entertainment.

If the British royal family was looking for a public relations win after Princess Catherine’s Photoshop fails, the unveiling of King Charles’ newest royal portrait was not it.

“I’m sorry, but this portrait looks like he’s in hell,” one person posted in comments under artist Jonathan Yeo’s and the royal family’s joint Instagram post revealing and explaining the image.

“Without sounding rude this is the worst royal portrait I’ve ever seen,” another added.

“It looks like he’s bathing in blood,” a third concluded.

The painting, which stands at an impressive 6½ by 8½ feet, was commissioned three years ago by the Worshipful Company of Drapers, a medieval guild of wool and cloth merchants that now focuses on philanthropy. The piece will hang at the gallery in Drapers’ Hall in downtown London, Yeo wrote.

King Charles sat for four sessions with the artist, a trustee at the National Portrait Gallery who has painted Queen Camilla when she was duchess of Cornwall as well as Charles’ father, the late Prince Philip, albeit in much more flattering tones. Charles had a creative say in the project, suggesting the artist include the butterfly landing on his shoulder, doing double duty as a symbol of his commitment to the environment and to show his transformation as he ascended to the throne.

“When I started this project, His Majesty The King was still His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, and much like the butterfly I’ve painted hovering over his shoulder, this portrait has evolved as the subject’s role in our public life has transformed,” Yeo wrote.

“I do my best to capture the life experiences and humanity etched into any individual sitter’s face, and I hope that is what I have achieved in this portrait. To try and capture that for His Majesty The King, who occupies such a unique role, was both a tremendous professional challenge, and one which I thoroughly enjoyed and am immensely grateful for.”

Despite his involvement in the project, King Charles was “initially surprised by the strong color,” the artist told the BBC, and TikTok royals commentator @matta_of_fact noted that the king appeared to jump a bit when he pulled the cloth away to reveal the painting.

The online opinions didn’t stop at hellfire, however. Allusions to the royal family’s bloody colonial past, Charles and Camilla’s infamous tampon scandal and the family’s current woes, including the king’s recent cancer diagnosis, ran rampant.

But not everyone seemed bothered. Queen Camilla took one look at the painting, the BBC reported, and said, “Yes, you’ve got him.”

So let’s credit John Krasinski for not taking the easy way out. Writing and directing his new kid’s movie, “IF,” Krasinski is doing his darndest to craft a story that works organically no matter the age, with universal themes — imagination, fear, memory — that just hit different depending on who you are.

Or maybe sometimes, they hit the same — because Krasinski, who wanted to make a movie his kids could watch , is also telling us that sometimes, we adults are more connected to our childhood minds than we think. A brief late scene that actually doesn’t include children at all is one of the most moving moments of the film – but I guess I would say that, being an adult and all.

There’s only one conundrum: “IF,” a story about imaginary friends that blends live action with digital creatures and some wonderful visual effects , has almost too many riches at its disposal. And we’re not even talking about the Who’s Who of Hollywood figures voicing whimsical creatures: Steve Carell, Matt Damon, Bradley Cooper, Jon Stewart, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Maya Rudolph, Emily Blunt, Sam Rockwell, and the late Louis Gosset Jr. are just a few who join live stars Ryan Reynolds and Cailey Fleming. Imagining a table read makes the head spin.

The issue is simply that with all the artistic resources and refreshing ideas here, there’s a fuzziness to the storytelling itself. Just who is actually doing what and why they’re doing it — what are the actual mechanics of this half-human, half-digital world? — occasionally gets lost in the razzle-dazzle.

But, still, everything looks so darned lovely, starting with the pretty, brownstone-lined streets of Brooklyn Heights in New York City, where our story is chiefly set. We begin in flashback, with happy scenes of main character Bea as a little girl, playing with her funloving parents . But soon we’re sensing Mom may be sick — she’s wearing telltale headscarves and hats — and it becomes clear what’s happening.

Bea is 12 when she arrives with a suitcase at her grandmother’s Brooklyn apartment, filled with her old paint sets and toys. Grandma offers the art supplies, but Bea tells her: “I don’t really do that anymore.”

She says something similar to her father, visiting him in the hospital He tells Bea he’s not sick, just broken, and needs to be fixed. Hoping to keep her sense of fun alive, he jokes around, but she says sternly: “Life doesn’t always have to be fun.”

And then the creatures start appearing, visible only to Bea.

We first meet a huge roly-poly bundle of purple fur called “Blue” Yes, we said he was purple. The kid who named him was color-blind. These, we soon understand, are IFs —imaginary friends — who’ve been cut loose, no longer needed. There’s also a graceful butterfly called Blossom who resembles Betty Boop . A winsome unicorn . A smooth-voiced elderly teddy bear We’ll meet many more.

Supervising all of them is Cal An ornery type, at least to begin with, he’s feeling rather overworked, trying to find new kids for these IFs. But now that Bea has found Cal living atop her grandmother’s apartment building, she’s the chosen helper.

The pair — Reynolds and the sweetly serious Fleming have a winning chemistry — head to Coney Island on the subway, where Cal shows Bea the IF “retirement home.” This is, hands down, the most delightful part of the movie. Filmed at an actual former retirement residence, the scene has the look down pat: generic wall-to-wall carpeting, activity rooms for CG-creature group therapy sessions, the nail salon. And then the nonagenarian teddy bear gives Bea a key bit of advice: all she need do is use her imagination to transform the place. And she does, introducing everything from a spiffy new floor to a swimming pool with Esther Williams-style dancers to a rock concert with Tina Turner.

The movie moves on to Bea’s matchmaking efforts. A tough nut to crack is Benjamin , an adorable boy in the hospital who favors screens and seems to have trouble charging his own imagination .

There are segments here that feel like they go on far too long, particularly when Bea, Cal and Blue track down Blue’s now-adult “kid” , now nervously preparing for a professional presentation.

Still, the idea that adults could still make use of their old “IFs” at difficult times — and, to broaden the thought, summon their dormant sense of whimsy, as a closing scene captures nicely — is a worthwhile one. And by movie’s end, one can imagine more than one adult in the multiplex running home, checking under the bed, hoping to find a trusted old friend.

“IF,” a Paramount release, has been rated PG by the Motion Picture Association “for thematic elements and mild language.” Running time: 104 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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